


Who I’d Be

by SavageNutella46



Series: Maribat One-Shots [11]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, Maribat - Fandom, Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Bad Parents Jack and Janet Drake, Chapter one does not have Jason in it, F/M, Sibling!AU, also jason todd, because I am living for this shit, my second one in a row, no beta we die like an unwanted child
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:33:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28118508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SavageNutella46/pseuds/SavageNutella46
Summary: Because, who would you be, if not for the woman who birthed you?
Relationships: Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug/Jason Todd, Tim Drake & Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug
Series: Maribat One-Shots [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1882840
Comments: 41
Kudos: 204





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [statue of ice](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26009086) by [m3owww](https://archiveofourown.org/users/m3owww/pseuds/m3owww). 



> aasdhfjffl I hope you like this because it gets more into the plot next chapteerrr

"If I really loved you," Her mother whispers into her ear, long, flowy brown hair brushing up against Marinette's chin as Janet bends down, "Do you really think I would keep you around?"

Pain is all she knows. It's recognizable and familiar, from the moment she trips on her footing to the moment her mother slams the door on her way to the airport the day before her birthday. It reverberates through the corridors, both the unspoken and spoken words of her parents, watching, scrutinizing her under their gaze.

It's almost sad how acquainted she is with the feeling; she'll never know another prolonging emotion other than the underlying disappointment and ice cold hurt that runs through her veins instead of blood. She runs on it, it drives her to do great things, so her mother has told her.

Because love makes you weak, and Janet was the hardest of shells to crack. Janet Drake was ice cold, a model statue on display for students to replicate but never quite duplicate, and the sole student was Marinette Drake.

Marinette spends hours perfecting her posture and practicing the judgemental stare Janet dawns on her opponents in the business field. Marinette is a Drake, and she makes it a vital accomplishment to achieve, because, who would you be, if not for the woman who birthed you?

Marinette dreams of a day she can run free without the threat Janet hangs over her head. She wonders of a job she would work in instead of Drake Industries. Would she be a teacher? Or would she be working a lonely office job, like the mediocre scum her mother sneers down upon?

She likes to think that, maybe, her little brother, who she adores so much, would be daring enough to defy Janet, who stuck him in the same well as Marinette and gave them but a single hay bale to carve a rope out of. That maybe her ten-year-old brother, who still sometimes walks into her bed, crying from another nightmare, would grow into the man Janet always wanted Marinette to be.

"You get killed here, publicizing yourself. Shape up, Marinette." Janet's eyes harden as she utters the words, so lowly that Marinette might've thought she'd been imagining it if she hadn't seen her mother's lips move.

She had been teaching Timothy around his new camera—he'd begged her how to use one, since she always made sure she knew her way around a good heap of technology—and what a lovely thing that camera is.

Or, was. When little Timmy left for dinner, she'd startled at the unmistakable warning her mother's heels make as they near closer to her open bedroom.

_Marinette scrambled to for an adequate hidey hole to conceal her camera, to no avail, she relented to shifting the equipment behind her back and praying Janet wouldn't peek around her daughter._

_"Marinette." Marinette gulped down a hard lump of saliva and found her mother staring at her, her hard gaze fixed on the trembling arm Marinette was using to hide her camera._

_"Move your arm." Her breath came in shallow gasps now, and she was trembling so hard she almost couldn't shake her head. Janet raised a harsh eyebrow at her denial, daring her to continue defying her._

_"Now." Marinette felt a drop of sweat slink down the prickly skin of her neck as her mother neared closer, an unintelligible shake in her hands as she reached out to yank Marinette's arm. Marinette yelped as Janet's fingernails dug deep into her arm, drawing blood from the sharp claws._

_"M-mother, you're hurting me—" Janet ripped the camera from her sweaty grip, and scowled down at it, flicking her steely gaze back and forth from the camera to Marinette._

_"Is this what you've been hiding? Are you stupid?" Marinette sucked in a lungful of breath without releasing it, head snapping to the side as a hot burn spread across her cheek._

_Her mother had slapped her._

_"This is what you do instead of studying? I'm not surprised you're number two at school." Her mother's voice portrayed eerie calmness, but the threat behind the words emotionally shot her in the head. Marinette gasped and brought a hand to her burning cheek._

_"M-mother—" Janet cut her off with a tsk, and grabbed her arm again, yanking Marinette to stare closely into her tear-streaked face. Her cold brown eyes held no recognition, just disappointment that made a shiver run down Marinette's spine._

Marinette Drake makes it into a habit to become more closed off after the ordeal. She learns solely through encounters and fear-gripping words that Janet will never accept her for who she's become, will never look at her with a warm tint of pride in her eyes the way it glimmers for Tim, and Marinette understands.

On the outside, Marinette Drake is everything her mother wants her to be, on the inside,

Well, on the inside, she is Marinette. She's an eager student with a knack for all things tech. She excels in her advanced Java class and makes it a point to keep experimenting with new softwares; picking up unique hacking skills along the way, fascinated by the lessons she receives from the red-haired sassy woman working at the Gotham Public Library.

Marinette is someone her mother will never accept. Marinette is someone her mother would have jumped at the chance to kill off if given the choice, for she is nothing to society and Drake Industries.

She is absolutely no one in the eyes of Janet and Jack Drake, her parents.


	2. Who I Am

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She finally finds herself amongst the dusty rubble remains of her pride—of her broken family. 
> 
> She is something—never nothing. She is not nothing.

"She can't know, Timmy." Marinette whispers, wincing at the tight grip Tim has on her elegant green-silk dress, clutching it so hard wrinkles begin to form. Janet will have her head for those later.

They're standing in the corner, shouldered off from the rest of the Gala by a lone velvet curtain covering the long window sitting beside them, while Tim grasps onto her dress and pleads.

"Why not? She'd love to come! She'd be so proud of you." Marinette winced again, the wholly untruth of those words invisible to her twelve-year old brother, who's eyes are so innocent and excited. She looks down at him with a brief smile, and gently extracts her dress from his hold.

"Timothy." A pointed look, to show she is done with arguing with him about the conversation. "I assure you, Janet will not know of the exhibit prior to your mouth, so you will do your best to shut it." Formal language with Tim will always turn the sparkle off in his eye, the excited glint disappearing, and as much as it brings a hammering wallow to her heart, she swallows the regret harshly down her throat.

"Look, Tim. She's never been a fan of my photography. She would rather go to your parent-teacher conference." She plasters on a fake smile as she says the words, and they practically grind against her teeth as they fall out of her mouth.

He's been begging her to tell their mother about the photography exhibit for days on end now, and she can't give in now. He doesn't know about what happened to her old camera, and he never will. It was in pieces by the end of dinner, that day.

Tim sags his shoulders and sighs, putting on an unimpressed look at the mention of parent-teacher conferences. "Whatever." He turns around and reenters the ongoing Gala without another word.

Marinette swallows her plea for him to come back, please, and sighs. She looks down at the wrinkles in her—

—satin dress, and Janet, an almost unnoticeable twitch of her jaw, displays her disdain for the tiny creases at her hip. Marinette breathes a sigh of relief and feels a drop of sweat roll down the side of her neck when Janet turns back to the fellow business partner she had been conversing with before Marinette caught her attention by walking back into the room.

"Are you okay?" She flinches at the unexpected hand on her shoulder—jumps a little too noticeably to just be nerves, settling once she notes the hand is smaller than Jack's.

Marinette turns around, and suddenly, her vision is spilled over with a bright worried blue peering into her own eyes, searching for anything and everything, leaving her bare, almost as if they were stripping the secrets from her very own soul.

She must've looked surprised, because the voice quickly started to speak again, soothing her downtrodden nerves with a surprisingly gentle voice. "Sorry, you looked backed up for a moment there." Marinette clears her throat and spares a quick—panicked—glance back at Janet's back before settling back on the boy, who's followed her gaze with an almost imperceptible furrow in his eyebrow.

"It's fine, did you need something?" The boy's lips quirk up for a second before flickering his gaze down to her midsection and up again.

"Your hands are bleeding." Marinette's eyebrows shoot up, tearing away her eyes from the boy to take a glance at her clenched hands, where her nails have penetrated the skin and blood was oozing out.

"Oh," She breathes, and unclenches the fingers from their grip to reveal crescent-shaped welts in the heel of her palms. The boy takes a warm and surprisingly gentle hand to each of hers and begins to tug her along the floor, almost bumping into several ladies with long, expensive dresses who each took a turn to glare at her once they saw who was dragging her.

Huh, they must not be a fan of this guy.

"So, what's your name?" She turns her gaze back to him, and he's already peering at her with a slight turn of his head and a tiny grin. She never knew such a small upturn of lips could convey so much emotion, so much gentleness, but she finds herself not wanting to tear her eyes away from it.

"Oh, Uh—Marinette, Marinette Drake."

"Jason Todd." She swallows harshly as she realizes just who he is.

"You—"

"Yeah. Not really a big deal." He turns his head back to watch where he's going, and she finds herself going cold under the loss of Jason's gaze. Marinette mentally scolds herself and lets him pull her into a secluded room away from the Gala, momentarily breaking away to grab a first-aid kit from a fancy wooden cabinet.

Jason rummages through the white kit, "That woman, she's your mom?" She can almost decipher an undertone of scorn from his voice. Marinette coughs and looks away, a prickly feeling rattling its way up her arms and fingers at the slightly mention of her mother.

"Yes." The painting on the beige walls looks very interesting right now as she feels the weight of his piercing stare on her shoulders.

"Figured. She was lookin' at you real weird. Like she wanted to shoot an arrow in between your eyeballs." Marinette's head snaps back to Jason, and he has a skeptical look on his face, like he thinks...

_No_. He's wrong.

Whatever he's thinking, it's _wrong_.

—But, still, it hurts to wonder.

"You know, I've heard about Jack and Janet Drake, but I've never heard of you. Just Tim, that's his name, right?" She nods, turning her gaze back to the small wrinkles in her once magnificent green dress.

"I tend to keep out of the limelight. Less people to judge me." She hears a huff of laughter from right in front of her, and looks back up to see Jason kneeling before her hands, gently taking both of them in his warm hands, wiping away the blood with a cotton ball.

"I understand that. Still weird though, never would've guessed you even existed if I hadn't seen you right in front of me." The atmosphere around them was slowly starting to get uncomfortable, and Marinette feels as if a frog jumped in her throat and planted itself at the base of her lungs, scratching and strangling her.

"W-weird." She'd never been one for receiving public praise or glory. Never had her parents talk about her with a twinkle in their eye and a found sense of pride in their voice and posture, as if she were the best thing in their lives. No, instead they confined Marinette to her bedroom to waste away.

(What they didn't know, there was a rope she would swing down from her vast window, escaping through the abundant gardens to escape to the library.)

Jason hums in agreement, but not without a disbelieving glance in her direction. Not like she was looking anyway, feeling a nervous sweat start to form on the back of her neck as she stated hard at his hands, who are making their way back down to his own lap.

"All good." She wishes it could be that easy. To slap a bandaid on all the things that made her worthless, and finish the whole ordeal off with an “all good”.

But, no. This is not an “ordeal”. This is her livelihood, her existence. She is—

_Who is she_?

She’s putting up her photography on her appointed wall space. Snapshots of Gotham at her finest, smog floating through the air, the dim glow of lights as they spill onto the leaf-littered streets. The assault of dirty rain, like cold, hard truth spilling onto the leaves of sweet lies she almost surrounds herself with.

Because she defines herself with photography. She defines herself into computers, hacking the Pentagon at least twice a week.

But, photography without her, it stays the same. Marinette without a passion, she dies and wilts away under the scornful glare of her mother. She is hated, worthless, disgusting, mortifying to mention, as if the utter of her name will bring disgrace upon the Drakes.

Marinette is wearing her finest dress. Leaf-like structures sewn into the bodice, streaking their way down her waist and puffing out to follow the soft ivory dress.

“Woah.” Marinette could’ve sworn, even as someone stands very obviously behind her, looking over her shoulder, that she did not tell a soul about this exhibit.

—Except Barbara Gordon. Marinette turns around, and Barbara appears to be ethereal before her own eyes, ginger hair curled and spilling like a waterfall down her back. A deep mahogany dress fits around her, as if it’s made solelyfor the capable woman.

“Babs, you made it.” (Because, Barbara would kill her if she called her anything different.)

Barbara smiles beautifully at Marinette and slaps the boy next to her on the back—the one her uttered such a defining, yet normal word under her work. (Woah—she never thought her work was capable of such a word.)

It’s Jason Todd standing next to Barbara, looking quite fancy himself and staring at her with an awe she’s never seen on anyone before. Marinette smiles at him with familiarity, eyebrows slightly furrowing when he tears his gaze away, suddenly, and a red tint blooms across his cheekbones.

“I couldn’t live with myself if I hadn’t, besides, this is worth it.” Barbara pulls her gaze back with a warm voice. She continues, “Where’s your parents?” She turns her head and scans over the crowd, before returning back to Marinette with a questioning look. Suddenly, Jason’s eyes are back on her as well.

She fiddles with her thumbs, taken aback by such a question. “Um, uh, they’re—“ Sitting at home, arguing with each other. (They’d decided to skip Tim’s parent teacher conference, for the boy was top of his class, what more did they need to know?) “They’re—they couldn’t make it.”She coughs, ignoring the apologetic eyes before her.

“So! What do you think?” She smiles, quickly changing the subject, and even though their gazes remain the same for a second, they quickly agree with her non-verbal plea to change the subject.

“It’s great—“

“Wonderful. How do you get your shots so high up? You’d need to be awfully skilled to do that. The amount of dark to light shots of Gotham contrasts perfectly with each other, really shows the side we don’t see.” Jason listed, keeping his eyes on the photos the entire time.

Marinette opens her mouth, gaping at Jason. She’s sure Barbara is doing the same without looking at the older, judging on the cricket-inducing silence coming from Marinette’s left.

Jason seemingly snaps back to reality, shutting his mouth audibly and clearing his throat. “Sorry, you just...” And Marinette finds it in herself to talk once again.

“Thank you, that...really means a lot to me.” Jason looks back at her, and she smiles widely at him, a real, genuine smile she’s sure she’s never produced in her fifteen years.  
  


Jason smiles back with the same intensity and continues to rattle off compliments, ones she knows is coming from his heart, because there’s a heavy blush on his face the entire time.

Maybe she’s found her passion. Maybe this is who she is, because, standing under the bright museum lights, standing next to two unexpected—but welcome— friends who acknowledge her worth, she’s found herself.

She’s Marinette. Just Marinette.

This is who she is. She is something. She is everything she’s ever wanted to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOT ME UPDATING AFTER TWO WEEKS ASKDHAHSG
> 
> But, seriously, tell me what you think in the comments. Advice, grammar mistakes, opinions... I’ll take it all 🤌
> 
> If you guys like this... I might write a third chapter about her parents and how she crushes their egotistical souls right out of their HAndsS— but for now, I need to get back to Red Bird.
> 
> Barbara Gordon ❤️❤️

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are appreciated 🥴


End file.
